


The Grunnings Contract

by 5972OltonHall



Series: The Vernon Chronicles [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Gen, Grunnings, Hogwarts Express, Hogwarts Railways, Rivers of London (Minor references to Newtonian magic)., Wizarding railways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:40:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29901918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5972OltonHall/pseuds/5972OltonHall
Summary: After a burglary at the Hogwarts Railways depot in Southall Harry Potter contacts his cousin with a sales opportunity, they meet and discover that before his death Vernon had made some unexpected connections.Set pre-COVID. It is a further instalment in the longer thread, The Vernon Chronicles. Lockdown demotivated me for finishing off my earlier works in progress so an apology for those delays. Updated 12th March 2021.
Series: The Vernon Chronicles [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1336006
Kudos: 2





	The Grunnings Contract

** 2:56am A cold and foggy February night in 2020 - Barney Greengrass’s home **

When you’ve worked a day shift in a blue collar workshop role, and have gone to bed after a few well earned beers, you sleep like a log. Barney Greengrass was in that deep sleep state when the telephone began to ring, he initially grunted, half turned towards the ringing phone then went back to snoring loudly as the answering machine kicked in. The second and third follow up calls immediately afterwards only resulted in similar stirrings and it took the fourth call to wake Barney sufficiently for him to answer the dratted thing.

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news Sir, but you need to come down here. We’ve been burgled big time.”

“OK, on my way. What’s gone?”

The conversation lasted only a little longer before Barney was getting dressed and rushing back in to work.

**9:30am Southall Depot**

In the seven hours since the burglary had been discovered some cleaning up had been managed but it seemed very strange to be inside the workshop, a workshop now devoid of most of the machine tools that normally stood in rows. A workshop not quiet but now filled with a low murmur of conversations not the noises of an engineering workshop well into the day shift.

The inventory of the big stuff had been easy, gone were any bits of kit not designed just for specialist railway use. Three lathes, two pillar drills, the milling machine, welding gear and the forklift all taken. As for the small hand tools nothing was left and the stores had been stripped of all materials and any non-ferrous castings. For now they could still run the trains, nothing on the running side had been touched, but if anything broke they were going to be well and truly stuffed.

Ron Weasley was in charge of the investigation and he was puzzled, it just didn’t make sense. This had been a burglary assisted by magic, whether organised by squibs, muggles or wizards he didn’t, as yet, have a clue. What was clear from the vestigia and sheer speed of the equipment removal was that wizards had been involved. It had to be their type of wizard too, yes the Newtonian practitioners could have done it, but they would not have got past the boundary wards; or at least not without the help of someone from the magical side. Those wards were still in place, all a team of only muggle burglars would have seen was the slightly down at heel premises of Mason & Castle and a large patch of waste ground fronting the railway. His owl reporting back to the Ministry was not filled with any great expectations of early arrests.

**11:30am Ministry of Magic Head Auror’s Office**

Harry Potter, for he was head of the service, reached for the muggle telephone, one of only two in the building, the other was on the Minister of Magic’s desk. The Ministry’s two landlines had old equipment attached, with magic destroying powered up silicon chips it meant anything modern was out of the question. True Harry had more modern gear available when out of the office, it was just that the Ministry building was just too riddled with embedded magical systems to risk it. The old, heavy Bakelite handset, was cold to his touch as he jammed it between his shoulder and chin: at least as his fingers were rotating the dial, he could recompose his thoughts. The news from Southall had been bad but impersonal, this phone call was going to be very personal and definitely awkward.

After the shortest burst of a ringing tone Harry was committed.

“Grunnings’ how can we help you” was the pleasant voice that answered the call.

Hoping he had the right tone of voice he answered “Dudley Dursley in The IT Unit please.”

“May I say whose calling.”

“His cousin Harry” seemed such a shallow thing to say but he could hardly say Head Auror Ministry of Magic and expect to be either believed or put through. Harry and Dudley were back on speaking terms. They had met a couple of times since Voldemort’s fall, and were at the exchange of Christmas cards stage, but although no longer fighting each other you could not yet say they were friends.

A few seconds later Dudley answered, a worried tone clearly evident in his voice. “What’s up Harry, are the family Ok?”

“Yes Dudley, we’re are all fine but I can do something for you. I can get Grunnings a very good sales opportunity in drills and machine tools for re-equipping one of our workshops. It needs new gear fast, but how the hell can we rig it so that no one discovers the end recipient. I know you aren’t in Sales but let’s meet and see what we can do to sort this,”

A few minutes later and they’d agreed to meet at one of the mezzanine eateries above the concourse of Waterloo Station.

**1:45pm The Mezzanine Waterloo Railway Station**

The ebb and flow of the busy railway station was going on below them, but up here perched above it, Harry and Dudley were isolated from it. Harry was outlining just what was needed and quickly, Dudley in his turn was startled by the size of the prospective order. Harry was beginning to move on to what he thought was going to be the hardest part of the process, hiding it from the muggles, when Dudley began to laugh.

“... Mason and Ca..Castle , in Southall... Oh my God...” more deep belly laughs. “Sorry about the burglary Harry but this news is the funniest thing I’ve heard in years.” He sat back, still chuckling, leaving Harry none the wiser and rather bemused.

After taking a drink from his beer glass Dudley continued “Mason and Castle and Dad never knew, never guessed they were a wizarding front. You must remember when we were both kids, Dad fawning over a dinner party with a Mr Mason and it all went crazy? A pudding got thrown round the kitchen.”

“Yes. There is a long story you will never have heard. I fled immediately afterwards as I’d got blamed for doing magic but it really, truly, wasn’t me: so, what’s the relevance?”

“God, this is so funny. Well a week or so afterwards Dad somehow managed to get back on Mr Mason’s good side and the pair of them signed a long term deal to supply him with Grunnings products. For a few years when I was home from Smeltings, and you weren’t around, Dad would boast about how much he was making in commission from Mr Mason. At the time it washed over me but since I’ve been working in Grunnings I’ve seen the details of the Mason & Castle account when I’ve been working in the system. They were Dad’s biggest customer and he never knew they were one of your lot! Supplying them won’t be an issue for us, but it adds to your headache on the burglary.”

As he finished talking, he again began to laugh, “Dad’s biggest customer, a wizard, and he never knew!”

A few minutes later they had parted and gone their separate ways. Dudley, still chuckling, had rung his colleagues in Sales and they were already onto the resupply options; Harry, confused and worried that somehow the carefully worked wards to keep the Southall depot a secret had been breached had the harder job ahead of him. Not only had the wards been breached but for many years that breach had been the conduit for getting muggle goods into the wizarding world. Of itself that was not a problem, the goods had to be delivered somehow, but a surprise none the less.

As he walked across the river, the short distance back towards the Ministry making the Underground unnecessary, his thoughts raced around what he had been told. Whilst, unlike Dudley, he didn’t find anything to do with his late Uncle particularly amusing (he still wasn’t that ready to totally forgive his mental and physical abuse) the irony of Vernon’s best customer actually being a wizard did bring a smile to his face.

Solving this burglary was going to be a long struggle.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Vernon, for the purposes of this story, has been killed in a car accident some time before the beginning of this piece.
> 
> 2) Slight spoiler for a minor element of Chamber of Secrets. If you have read that you will get the reference, if you haven't it doesn't matter.
> 
> 3) Having now finished off Magical Dudley (now slotted in as Part 6 of the Vernon Chronicles) this was reset into early 2020 rather than late 2019.


End file.
